Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness

by Henry Van Dyke

How much better it would have been if the farmer had left a few of the noble forest-trees to shade his house. But then, when the farmer came into the wilderness he was not a farmer, he was first of all a wood-chopper. He regarded the forest as a stubborn enemy in possession of his land. He attacked it with fire and axe and exterminated it, instead of keeping a few captives to hold their green umbrellas over his head when at last his grain fields should be smiling around him and he should sit down on his doorstep to smoke a pipe of home-grown tobacco.

In the time of adversity one should prepare for prosperity. I fancy there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the mistake of the Canadian farmer—chopping down all the native growths of life, clearing the ground of all the useless pretty things that seem to cumber it, sacrificing everything to utility and success. We fell the last green tree for the sake of raising an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop to think what an ugly, barren place we may have to sit in while we eat them. The ideals, the attachments—yes, even the dreams of youth are worth saving. For the artificial tastes with which age tries to make good their loss grow very slowly and cast but a slender shade.

Most of the Canadian farmhouses have their ovens out-of-doors. We saw them everywhere; rounded edifices of clay, raised on a foundation of logs, and usually covered with a pointed roof of boards. They looked like little family chapels—and so they were; shrines where the ritual of the good housewife was celebrated, and the gift of daily bread, having been honestly earned, was thankfully received.

At one house we noticed a curious fragment of domestic economy. Half a pig was suspended over the chimney, and the smoke of the summer fire was turned to account in curing the winter’s meat. I guess the children of that family had a peculiar fondness for the parental roof-tree. We saw them making mud-pies in the road, and imagined that they looked lovingly up at the pendent porker, outlined against the sky,—a sign of promise, prophetic of bacon.

About noon the road passed beyond the region of habitation into a barren land, where blueberries were the only crop, and partridges took the place of chickens. Through this rolling gravelly plain, sparsely wooded and glowing with the tall magenta bloom of the fireweed, we drove toward the mountains, until the road went to seed and we could follow it no longer. Then we took to the water and began to pole our canoes up the River of the Bear. It was a clear, amber-coloured stream, not more than ten or fifteen yards wide, running swift and strong, over beds of sand and rounded pebbles. The canoes went wallowing and plunging up the narrow channel, between thick banks of alders, like clumsy sea-monsters. All the grace with which they move under the strokes of the paddle, in large waters, was gone. They looked uncouth and predatory, like a pair of seals that I once saw swimming far up the river Ristigouche in chase of fish. From the bow of each canoe the landing-net stuck out as a symbol of destruction—after the fashion of the Dutch admiral who nailed a broom to his masthead. But it would have been impossible to sweep the trout out of that little river by any fair method of angling, for there were millions of them; not large, but lively, and brilliant, and fat; they leaped in every bend of the stream. We trailed our flies, and made quick casts here and there, as we went along. It was fishing on the wing. And when we pitched our tents in a hurry at nightfall on the low shore of Lac Sâle, among the bushes where firewood was scarce and there were no sapins for the beds, we were comforted for the poorness of the camp-ground by the excellence of the trout supper.

It was a bitter cold night for August. There was a skin of ice on the water-pail at daybreak. We were glad to be up and away for an early start. The river grew wilder and more difficult. There were rapids, and ruined dams built by the lumbermen years ago. At these places the trout were larger, and so plentiful that it was easy to hook two at a cast. It came on to rain furiously while we were eating our lunch. But we did not seem to mind it any more than the fish did. Here and there the river was completely blocked by fallen trees. The guides called it bouchée, “corked,” and leaped out gayly into the water with their axes to “un-cork” it. We passed through some pretty lakes, unknown to the map-makers, and arrived, before sundown, at the Lake of the Bear, where we were to spend a couple of days. The lake was full of floating logs, and the water, raised by the heavy rains and the operations of the lumbermen, was several feet above its usual level. Nature’s landing-places were all blotted out, and we had to explore halfway around the shore before we could get out comfortably. We raised the tents on a small shoulder of a hill, a few rods above the water; and a glorious camp-fire of birch logs soon made us forget our misery as though it had not been.

The name of the Lake of the Beautiful Trout made us desire to visit it. The portage was said to be only fifty acres long (the arpent is the popular measure of distance here), but it passed over a ridge of newly burned land, and was so entangled with ruined woods and desolate of birds and flowers that it seemed to us at least five miles. The lake was charming—a sheet of singularly clear water, of a pale green tinge, surrounded by wooded hills. In the translucent depths trout and pike live together, but whether in peace or not I cannot tell. Both of them grow to an enormous size, but the pike are larger and have more capacious jaws. One of them broke my tackle and went off with a silver spoon in his mouth, as if he had been born to it. Of course the guides vowed that they saw him as he passed under the canoe, and declared that he must weigh thirty or forty pounds. The spectacles of regret always magnify.

The trout were coy. We took only five of them, perfect specimens of the true Salvelinus fontinalis, with square tails, and carmine spots on their dark, mottled sides; the largest weighed three pounds and three-quarters, and the others were almost as heavy.

On our way back to the camp we found the portage beset by innumerable and bloodthirsty foes. There are four grades of insect malignity in the woods. The mildest is represented by the winged idiot that John Burroughs’ little boy called a “blunderhead.” He dances stupidly before your face, as if lost in admiration, and finishes his pointless tale by getting in your eye, or down your throat. The next grade is represented by the midges. “Bite ’em no see ’em,” is the Indian name for these invisible atoms of animated pepper which settle upon you in the twilight and make your skin burn like fire. But their hour is brief, and when they depart they leave not a bump behind. One step lower in the scale we find the mosquito, or rather he finds us, and makes his poisoned mark upon our skin. But after all, he has his good qualities. The mosquito is a gentlemanly pirate. He carries his weapon openly, and gives notice of an attack. He respects the decencies of life, and does not strike below the belt, or creep down the back of your neck. But the black fly is at the bottom of the moral scale. He is an unmitigated ruffian, the plug-ugly of the woods. He looks like a tiny, immature house-fly, with white legs as if he must be innocent. But, in fact, he crawls like a serpent and bites like a dog. No portion of the human frame is sacred from his greed. He takes his pound of flesh anywhere, and does not scruple to take the blood with it. As a rule you can defend yourself, to some degree, against him, by wearing a head-net, tying your sleeves around your wrists and your trousers around your ankles, and anointing yourself with grease, flavoured with pennyroyal, for which cleanly and honest scent he has a coarse aversion. But sometimes, especially on burned land, about the middle of a warm afternoon, when a rain is threatening, the horde of black flies descend in force and fury knowing that their time is short. Then there is no escape. Suits of chain armour, Nubian ointments of far-smelling potency, would not save you. You must do as our guides did on the portage, submit to fate and walk along in heroic silence, like Marco Bozzaris “bleeding at every pore,”—or do as Damon and I did, break into ejaculations and a run, until you reach a place where you can light a smudge and hold your head over it.

“And yet,” said my comrade, as we sat coughing and rubbing our eyes in the painful shelter of the smoke, “there are worse trials than this in the civilised districts: social enmities, and newspaper scandals, and religious persecutions. The blackest fly I ever saw is the Reverend ——” but here his voice was fortunately choked by a fit of coughing.